How lunar cycles guide the spawning of corals, worms and more
By Virat Markandeya Many sea creatures release eggs and sperm into the water on just the right nights of the month. Researchers are starting to understand the biological rhythms that sync them to phases of the moon. Read more
You’re invited: New online event series
Inside the brain: A lifetime of change
Knowable Magazine and Annual Reviews present a series of three live online events exploring how the latest neuroscience research can help us thrive across the lifespan. Hear from experts about setting kids up for success, supporting teenagers’ strengths and cultivating resilience as we age. The conversations will also include an audience Q&A
Register now to save your spot:
- March 23 | The baby brain: Learning in leaps and bounds
- April 26 | The teen brain: Mysteries and misconceptions
- May 17 | The mature mind: Aging resiliently
Each hourlong event begins at 12 p.m. Pacific (3 p.m. Eastern or 7 p.m. Greenwich). We will be recording the event and will send the replay to all registrants, so be sure to sign up even if you can’t attend live.
From the archives
There’s a theme to this week’s newsletter: Our curated items from around the web are all videos. Videos, you say? Over at Knowable Magazine’s YouTube channel we have past items aplenty for you to view, from sizzling shorts on the wild reproductive life of mussels and the excellent galaxy that we call home, to explorations of ADHD in girls, Joshua tree restoration efforts and the human face of long Covid
What we are reading
One whale’s afterlife
In May 2019, the body of a young male humpback came to rest on the sandy shores of Calvert Island in British Columbia. The smell of decay attracted a number of scavenging animals and, by luck, a person working at a research station nearby. The tale of this whale is detailed in six 10-minute videos by the Hakai Institute. Watch the series to learn more about the initial necropsy investigating how the animal died, the insights into whale biology its carcass left behind and the nearly four-year-long process of turning its skeleton into a hanging work of art.
A very full moon
Unicorns aren’t real — on Earth, that is. They did traipse across the Moon, according to a series of articles published in the New York Sun in 1835. The stories claimed that a prominent scientist had identified an array of fantastical creatures living on the lunar surface — beavers that walked on their hind legs, goats and, most exciting of all, man bats (scientific name Vespertilio homo). The public believed it, to the surprise of the paper’s publishers. But as journalist Kirsty B. Carter reports in an eight-minute BBC Reel video at Aeon, the cultural, scientific and religious atmosphere of the day primed readers to welcome this hoax as fact. Sound familiar?
Airchive
When winds are coming from the southwest, they bring the cleanest air in the world to Cape Grim in northern Tasmania. This air has traveled for thousands of miles without contact with land and sources of pollution, reports filmmaker Tom Scott in a five-minute video featured on the Scholarly Kitchen. Scientists bottle up the air every few months and thus can track greenhouse gases, detect atmospheric trends, improve models and more. The official samples date to 1978, but when scuba divers caught wind of the project, they began sending in old tanks — now the library has air from as far back as the 1950s.
Art & science
CREDIT: THE WARE COLLECTION OF BLASCHKA GLASS MODELS OF PLANTS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY HERBARIA / HARVARD MUSE
Captured in glass
Preserving specimens of once-living things is valuable for many reasons — but looks ain’t one of them. Animals interred in alcohol become discolored and shrunken; plants pressed and dried become husks of their former selves. In the late 1800s, some museums and universities got around this problem by commissioning or buying delicate glass models of living things, writes Dan Robitzski in the Scientist. Father-and-son team Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka were masters at crafting these scientifically accurate models; shown above is Rudolf’s Pride of Barbados, or peacock flower (Caesalpinia pulcherrima). The Harvard Museum of Natural History houses one of the larger collections of Blaschka models; it even includes glass renditions of rotten fruits and leaves infected by pathogens. Check out this slideshow for more and watch a film of the museum’s meticulous restoration of the collection.
